Seeking a City with Foundations: Theology for an Urban World

By David W Smith

More than half the people in the world live in cities, including a growing number of megacities with populations exceeding ten million people. This trend means that an understanding of urbanization must be an urgent priority for Christian theology and mission across the globe. This updated edition of Seeking a City with Foundations, with an additional chapter, explores Christian responses to the city, ranging from rejecting the urban as evil, to embracing it as being central to God’s redemptive purposes.

Drawing from a wide range of disciplines, including history, social science, urban planning, and the history of art, readers are given a detailed text which confronts the challenges that contemporary urbanization presents to world Christianity. Looking at urbanism as a theme throughout Scripture, culminating with the great vision of the New Jerusalem, David Smith explains that God’s own future is revealed as urban, highlighting the need to identify modern-day idols as we share the gospel in cities and acknowledge the impact of global economic forces. The book also explores the causes of what has been called the divided city and traces the urban theme through the Bible to present an alternative vision of the urban future – a future in which the injustices in ever-growing slums and a crisis of meaning among the privileged might be overcome through the power of the reconciling message of the cross. This timely book proposes a way forward for urban mission, highlighting that transformation of our cities must be the focal point of Christian mission and hope.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Langham Global Library
• Release date: Mar 31, 2019
• ISBN: 9781783684984

David W Smith

David Smith has had 30 years experience in the Electronics Industry. Before arriving at MMU he worked as an Electronics Design Engineer for ICL and Marconi. His teaching interests are focused on enabling Design and Technology students to implement microcontroller designs into their projects.

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David Smith traces urbanization from biblical times to the present phenomenon across the Majority World, describing how unplanned settlements appear around and within modern megacities, a reality I know in Nigeria. The book describes the marginalization of the urban poor by elites and foreign land-grabbers, creating an ever-widening gap between a minority of rich people and the poor majority. It points too, toward the hope of the emergence of a global movement characterized by love and justice, and offers a very cogent description of the emerging concerns arising from the phenomenon of the endless city.

Samuel P. Ango, PhD

Provost,

Theological College of Northern Nigeria, Bukuru, Jos, Nigeria

What a timely work! As I read these pages it felt as though the book was written in my city of Manipur, India, because it addresses the pertinent issues I am struggling with every day. David Smith has beautifully described the unprecedented influx of people into the cities, and the complex problems arising from this, including the threat to the natural world. Drawing insights from different fields of study, this is a must-read book for those who are committed to making the Christian message relevant in a global context today.

Jangkholam Haokip, PhD

Dean of Theology and Ethics,

United Biblical Seminary, Pune, India

David Smith grapples with the nature, meaning and trajectories of urban life, which he combines with a profound depth of theological reflection, rooted in Christian hope. This book will prove to be an excellent guide for students and practitioners alike who seek a deeper understanding of how the texts of the Bible can powerfully and prophetically speak afresh into our contemporary urban world.

Colin Smith, PhD

Church Mission Society, Oxford, UK

Seeking a City with Foundations lays a foundation that all future urban theological works must reckon with if they are to be faithful to their task. Smith both instructs and inspires in this very important book.

Eldin Villafane, PhD

Professor of Christian Social Ethics,

Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, Boston, USA

Recent years have witnessed an increasing focus on the growth of cities and megacities in the non-Western world. Sadly, the Christian community has been slow to respond to what this means for mission. David Smith’s book provides foundations and perspectives on the city and what it means to engage with the urban contexts of today in missional and gospel centred ways.

Peter Rowan, PhD

Co-National Director, OMF UK

David Smith’s book on urban theology is a remarkable achievement of interdisciplinary scholarship. This ground-breaking, beautifully written and lucidly organised text is thoroughly grounded in the literature of urbanism and urbanization, and also informed by the urgent theological problem posed by a radical change whereby more than half of humankind now lives in an urban environment.

David Martin, PhD

Emeritus Professor of Sociology,

London School of Economics, London, UK

This is a magisterial, complex book that deeply challenges the reader. It is recommended reading for Christians who are serious in seeking to understand and confront the changing needs of urban life throughout the world.

Geoff Gobbett Former London-Based Pastor

David Smith’s fascinating interpretation of global cities such as Mumbai, Brasilia, Dubai, and Glasgow, and his detailed urban reflections on the biblical text takes his readers on the most thrilling of journeys. The riches contained in the different levels of this text provide not just historical perspectives, but a dynamic and global relevance that reaches out into the future. Students and practitioners of urban mission will benefit in profound ways from absorbing this newly expanded book.

Stuart Weir, PhD

Scottish National Director, CARE

In Seeking a City with Foundations, David Smith argues with passionate conviction, Christianity’s shift in its centre of gravity from Europe to the Majority World. Through keen analyses of urban history and pathologies, the book offers fresh perspectives on the phenomena of megacities in Africa and Asia where millions of Christians crowd into churches to be part of a faith that is inclusive rather than exclusive, a faith in which slum dwellers and marginalized communities find their hopes and aspirations realized in the compassionate person of Christ. It is also where the major pentecostal movement promises material prosperity and success to the middle classes. The future of urban Christianity, the book maintains, is in its potential for being global – a world religion. David Smith’s writing is direct, insightful and compelling in its appeal. It is a major contribution to Christian religious studies. The book is of particular interest to scholars and readers in the Majority World.

Kanchana Ugbabe, PhD

Professor of English and Writer in Residence,

Fordham University, New York City, USA

What David Smith is talking about in this book, that is urban pathologies, is a reality I see and experience in my own Asian context in the Philippines. What makes this book important for our context is not only that it shows us the reality but that it gives us a vision that empowers us. The challenge is global, but God has chosen to use us to be agents of transformation.

Federico G. Villanueva, PhD

Publications Secretary, Asia Theological Association

Seeking a City with Foundations

Theology for an Urban World

David W. Smith

© 2019 David W. Smith

Published 2019 by Langham Global Library

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This edition of Seeking A City With Foundations is published by arrangement with Inter-Varsity Press, Nottingham, England.

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All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright ©1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan.

Scripture quotations marked NKJV are from the New King James Version. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked NRSV are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

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This book is dedicated to the memory of Ted Herbert, Christian leader, biblical scholar and greatly missed friend, without whose encouragement and support it would never have been begun.

Contents

Cover

Preface to the New Edition

Preface to the First Edition

Introduction to the New Edition

World Christianity and The Endless City

Life in the Endless City

Lessons from the Age of the Industrial City

World Christianity and the Endless City

That the World May Believe

1 Introduction

The Garden and the City

The City of God

The Challenge for Theology

Part I

2 The Challenge of an Urban World

The Growth of an Urban World

Urbanization in Africa

Cities of the Rich, Cities of the Poor

Understanding the Urban World

Agenda for an Urban Theology

3 The Birth and Growth of the City

The Sacred City

The Search for the Good City

The Fall and Rise of Urban Cultures

The Holy Commonwealth

The City and the Industrial Revolution

The Endless City

Urban Pathologies

Conclusion

4 Urban Visions, Urban Nightmares

The Garden City

The Radiant City

Visions and Nightmares

In the Cities of the South

Storm Clouds over the City

Back to the Future?

The Really Big Issue

5 City Skylines, City Meanings

From Sacred Centre to Preserved Monument

Moving Down the Hill

The Forest of Symbols

Visions of Utopia

A City without Meaning?

Part II

6 The Bible and the City:

In the Beginning

Let My People Go

The Challenge of the Cities of Canaan

Holy Zion: The Promise and the Failure

The Prophetic Perspective

The Critique of Urban Religion

Love in the City

Lament for the City

Hope for an Urban World

The Promise of Shalom

The Cities of the World

7 The Bible and the City:

Jesus and the City

The Tragedy of Jerusalem

Death and Resurrection

Urban Christianity in the Roman Empire

Romans: A Letter to an Urban Church

The New Jerusalem

Conclusion

8 Theology for an Urban World

Idols of Our Time

Theology and Hope for the City

The Gospel for an Urban World

Pentecostalism , Theology and the Urban World

The Urban Ekklesia : Evangelical, Emerging and Catholic

Here Is Your God!

Bibliography

Social Science Perspectives

Biblical/Theological Perspectives

About Langham Partnership

Endnotes

Index

Preface to the New Edition

The re-publication of this book has given me a welcome opportunity to correct some mistakes in the original version and to bring this text up to date in certain ways. I have made minor corrections and additions throughout the text and have updated the bibliography, but the main addition is a new chapter intended to sharpen the focus on the challenges and opportunities presented to the world Christian movement by the geographical and historical phenomenon of what has been called the Endless City.

I am more than ever convinced of the close parallels, or analogies, between the context of the early churches in a world dominated by the imperial power of the Roman Empire, and the situation which faces World Christianity in the era of globalization today. This means that, provided we read the Bible with close attention to its original contexts, we may discover in the story of the spread of the early Christian movement the guidance, encouragement, and hope which can equip us to meet the immense challenges of witnessing to the truth of the gospel in this twenty-first century. I am deeply humbled that this book is now to be made accessible to brothers and sisters in Christ around the world and I pray that, whatever its weaknesses and limitations, it might prove to be a helpful resource for them in responding faithfully to the challenges and opportunities which confront all who name the name of Jesus Christ today.

I want to express my heartfelt gratitude to Pieter Kwant and his colleagues, especially Vivian Doub, for making this new version of the book possible, and as someone who has long admired the pioneering and invaluable work of Langham Literature, I am delighted to be associated with this project at the present time.

David Smith

Glasgow, 2019

Preface to the First Edition

In 2001 I received an invitation to move to Glasgow to lead a team at the International Christian College developing a programme of postgraduate studies in urban ministry. The vision was to enable experienced practitioners of ministry in an urban world to undertake critical reflection and research on their work by providing tools enabling the analysis of urban situations and fresh readings of the Bible in the light of urban realities, local and global. As I considered this move I cast my mind back over my own journey, searching for evidence that my career contained experience giving me some credibility should I relocate to Glasgow! I thought of the eleven years spent in pastoral ministry in Cambridge, but although this qualified as urban ministry, it did not involve exposure to the kind of realities my colleagues in Glasgow had in mind. It was service in Nigeria which in this, as in so much else, opened my eyes to life in the city as it is lived by millions of people today. I visited churches in the Muslim cities of the north, including Kano, as well as those built in colonial times in the south-east, such as Calabar and Port Harcourt. But above all there was Lagos! During an extended stay in this sprawling metropolis I first encountered the slums of the Majority World, an experience which recurred later during a summer in the Philippines where I visited Christian congregations in shacks built on stilts just above the waterline in Manila.

These experiences of urban life left an indelible impression and prompted a series of questions to which I had no answers. How had it come about that so many people, my brothers and sisters, seemed condemned to live and die in such appalling situations? Nothing in my education, certainly not my theological education, had provided knowledge related to the causes of such urban poverty and destitution. But there were even more troubling questions: when asked to stand in front of a congregation of fellow believers in the slums and preach to them, what could I say? How did my understanding of the Bible connect with the circumstances of their lives? To this day I blush when I remember a message preached to a group of poor people whose circumstances triggered shock and anger within me, prompting a sermon in which I said the right things to the wrong people. In truth I was struggling to relate an inherited theology to a situation within which it would not fit, an experience which drove me back to the Bible with questions which had never entered my head in Cambridge.

I did make the move to Glasgow and have had the privilege of working there with a wonderful group of colleagues who, between them, possessed a wide range of expertise and shared a passionate commitment to the creation of an innovative programme of in-service studies in ministry in an urban world. I must thank Steven Chester, Darrell Cosden, Linda Dunnett, Neil Pratt, Tony Sargent and Ian Shaw for their fellowship during this process, and I especially honour the memory of Ted Herbert whose encouragement was crucial at every stage, and to whose memory this book is gratefully dedicated. The research undertaken during the past decade has provided me with a framework for the understanding of the growth of an urban world, while also compelling a re-reading of many biblical texts in the light of the urgent issues arising in this context. However, at least as important as these personal studies has been the ground-level experience of the students I have been privileged to engage with, members of international cohorts of practitioners of ministry in demanding city contexts from Aberdeen to Nairobi, and from Leipzig to Belfast. My sincere thanks are due to Proshanto Baroi, Henk Bouma, Philip Bowdler, Paul Ede, Mike Edwards, Andrew Elliott, Carl Lahr, Chris Martin, Richard Mayabi, Bos Menzies, John Merson, Patrick Mukholi, Steve Taylor, David Thompson and Alison Urie.

A book of this kind, drawing insights from a wide range of academic disciplines, involves considerable risks on the part of an author who is a specialist in none of these areas. That being so, I am grateful for the critical feedback provided by specialists who have read and commented on all or part of my manuscript: John Goldingay, Pekka Pitkänen, Andrew Smith, Colin Smith and Eldin Villafañe. My colleague Wes White has offered me his perceptive insights, pointed out some key resources which I had overlooked, while always being an enthusiastic supporter of this project. More than anyone I know, Wes exemplifies the meaning of the phrase, a reflective practitioner, and I am profoundly grateful for his friendship. However, despite the advice mentioned here, there are places in this text where I skate on very thin ice, so making it more than ever necessary to absolve all of the above friends of responsibility for my mistakes; for these I alone must take the blame. Finally, I cannot imagine a better editor than Phil Duce at IVP; he has chased me when necessary, raised questions about dubious statements, been wonderfully patient and, above all, has given unstinting encouragement and support from start to finish.

David Smith

Glasgow, 2010

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Photo 1: Shanghai ©zhangyang 135769- stock.adobe.com

Introduction to the New Edition

World Christianity and The Endless City

Christianity is fundamentally an urban religion, the city having a prominent place not just in its history, doctrine and beliefs, but in its organization, practice and worship.[1]

The first edition of this book appeared in 2011, and less than a decade later I have the privilege of writing an introduction to a fresh printing intended to make this study of urbanization and urban theology accessible to a global readership. It might seem premature to be revising and expanding this book less than ten years after its original publication, but such is the pace and scale of urbanization in the contemporary world that every year changes as cities small and large continue to grow and urban culture penetrates further across the world, reaching into even the remotest parts of the globe. When this book was published the worldwide urban population had already passed the significant figure of 50 percent of the people living on this planet but it is anticipated that this statistic will rise to an astonishing 75 percent by the year 2050.

Little wonder then that when the scholars and urban professionals behind the Urban Age Project of the London School of Economics and Deutsche Bank came to publish the findings of their massive two-year global survey of the condition of key cities they gave it the title The Endless City.[2] The impact of this continually accelerating urban growth is felt particularly in the southern hemisphere and especially in China and Sub-Saharan Africa. In little more than thirty years China has witnessed the largest scale of urbanization and the most rapid rural-to-urban transition in human history, while Africa has become the most rapidly urbanizing continental region on the planet and is expected to have a larger share of the world’s urban population than Europe by 2030.[3] Edward Soja and Miguel Kanai conclude that we are witnessing a shift in the world’s urban centre of gravity and they write:

More than ever before it can be said that the Earth’s entire surface is urbanized to some degree, from the Siberian tundra to the Brazilian rainforest to the icecap of Antarctica, perhaps even to the world’s oceans and the atmosphere we breathe. Of course, this does not mean that there are dense agglomerations everywhere, but the major features of urbanism as a way of life – from the play of market forces and the effect of administrative regulations, to popular cultural practices and practical geopolitics – are becoming ubiquitous. To a degree not seen before, no one on earth is outside the sphere of influence of urban industrial capitalism.[4]

Life in the Endless City

The history of urbanization, especially during the industrial revolution in Britain in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, clearly indicates that the movement of masses of people from rural, traditional cultures to urban contexts resulted in significant social, psychological and spiritual problems. These problems have sometimes been described as urban pathologies, and they suggest that we can anticipate that life in the endless city will be accompanied by human distress and suffering of a kind not previously experienced in the close-knit, face-to-face communities which are left behind in the countryside. Indeed, so momentous was the change involved in the movement from the country to the city in modern Europe that it gave birth to the new academic discipline of sociology which attempted to analyse the nature of modern, urban society and to propose ways in which the threats it seemed to pose to human well-being might be overcome. Much of the literature on the industrial city expressed astonishment, perplexity, and pronounced concern over the developing conditions of modern urban life. Indeed, for many commentators, life in the crowded city seemed to represent nothing less than a fundamental and unnatural mutation of the human species.[5]

The question which presents itself to us with great urgency at this point is whether, as the world now witnesses urbanization on an unprecedented scale, the urban pathologies which created such problems in the industrial city are being writ large in the megacities across the Majority World?

It is possible to read urban history from the very earliest of times as the story of a progression from cohesive tribal communities to new forms of social structures in which divisions open up between a privileged elite and an oppressed peasantry whose labour makes possible the wealth and security of those who hold power. The historian Lewis Mumford described the emergence of city-states in the ancient Near East at around 3,000 BC as involving the creation of a ruling class of kings and priests, so that the earliest city, as distinct from the village community, is a caste-managed society, organized for the satisfaction of a dominant minority: no longer a community of humble families living by mutual aid.[6]

The depiction of early urban life we discover in the Bible confirms at least the possibility that life in the city will result in social segmentation, the growth of a powerful and prosperous elite, and the oppression of the weak and poor. The story of the city and tower of Babel, the description of the wickedness of the walled cities in Canaan, and the emergence of the imperial cities of Nineveh, Babylon and, above all, of Rome, create the context within which Israel’s distinctive, covenantal faith comes into being. That faith was, on the one hand, completely realistic concerning the potential for corruption and social injustice in the city, while, on the other hand, it provided a pattern and a vision for an alternative form of urbanism. The Bible relates a story of two cities, one reflecting human fallenness and hubris, the other shaped by the social justice inscribed in the Law of Moses and nurturing a concern for the neighbour, the stranger, and the disadvantaged. These two conflicting forms of urban life come into collision in the reign of King Josiah when, having rediscovered the mislaid and forgotten scroll of the Torah, the young ruler recognized what has been called an alternative Torah possibility for the city.[7] Walter Brueggemann describes this Mosaic, Deuteronomic tradition as urgent in its conviction that the economy can be structured in a way that lets the entire population celebrate the accomplishment of urban wealth and power.[8]

The relevance of this to the endless city of the twenty first century is surely clear. What makes the current phase of urbanization unique is its global scale and the fact that it is driven by a complex web of extremely powerful forces which are subsumed under the term globalization. With the collapse of the bi-polar world in which a Capitalist West confronted a Communist East for most of the twentieth century, the entire world appeared to be open to the expansion and growing dominance of the free-market system. At the same time, a whole series of technological advances made possible the instantaneous communication of information and the global transfer of financial assets, and this, together with the growth in systems of rapid international travel, seemed to shrink the spaces between nations and continents, making possible the universal spread of the cultural values and aspirations associated with modernization, development, and urban living.

The crucial question is this: what kind of urbanism is shaping human life and society in the endless city? If the history of the city contains clear warnings concerning the possibility that the power and wealth generated by urbanization may be abused and can result in a deeply divided human family, we have every reason to be profoundly concerned about the potential for injustice and inequality on a global scale as cities across the southern hemisphere continue to expand. In 2011 the UN Habitat organization reported that the numbers of slum dwellers were continuing to grow and were expected to reach a staggering figure of 889 million people by 2020. What this means at ground level is that increasing numbers of people face hunger as relentless rises in food prices in many urban areas combine with persistently low incomes, creating a situation in which the urban poor cannot afford to purchase adequate amounts and types of food.[9]

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Photo 2: Dubai ©jovannig – stock.adobe.com

The urban sociologist Saskia Sassen has described the way in which increasing numbers of people are not simply driven to the physical margins of social and economic life in the endless city but are actually expelled from it in the sense that they no longer count and are eliminated from official statistics concerning economic life. Sassen describes how the economy is being redefined to exclude large numbers of the poor and unemployed who fall off the edge of what is defined as ‘the economy.’

Such a redefinition makes the economy presentable, so to speak, allowing it to show a slight growth in its measure of GDP per capita. The reality at ground level is more akin to a kind of economic version of ethnic cleansing in which elements considered troublesome are dealt with by simply eliminating them.[10]

A concrete example of the process which Sassen describes can be seen in the case of Nigeria’s new capital city, Abuja. Uniquely in Africa this is a completely planned city, designed both to relieve pressure on the previous federal capital of Lagos, and to be a symbol of hope and progress for Nigeria’s future. However, placed at the geographical heart of the nation, Abuja has inevitably attracted large numbers of impoverished people seeking employment and economic survival, and as a result a necklace of unplanned settlements has sprung up around the fringes of the city. Politicians have been reported as saying that Abuja is not a city for the poor and that once the planning regulations have been enforced within the city limits, work will commence to demolish the informal settlements which have appeared around its edges. However, many of the people who live outside the city are employed within it and the air-conditioned offices in well-lit modern buildings depend upon their labour, whether in clerical work or as low-paid cleaners who maintain the image of which Abuja is proud.[11] The realities of the divided city cannot be concealed by the attempt on the part of a privileged elite to withdraw to an urban space sealed off as if by invisible walls from the rest of the population, since no society can truly prosper if large numbers of people cannot meet their basic needs while others live in opulence.[12]

A closely related issue discussed by Sassen concerns the new global market for land. The idea of land as a marketable product was inconceivable within traditional societies; the land had been passed down through generations and so provided a tangible link to the ancestors. In the final analysis the land belonged to God who had created it and was therefore a sacred trust to be cared for and shared with other creatures. With the introduction of the market principle the link between a plot of earth and a particular people, both living and dead, is severed. Land, like everything else, may be bought and sold and becomes the basis of financial speculation in which some people accumulate vast amounts of money while others lose what they once considered to be their birthright.[13]

However, in the global age land is not only a marketable commodity, but an increasingly scarce and valuable resource and Sassen highlights an alarming increase in the volume and geographical spread of foreign acquisitions of large tracts of land in Africa and Latin America. Crops are grown not to feed a local population, but to provide food or fuel for people who live on the other side of the world. So serious is this development that I quote Sassen at some length:

The scale of land acquisitions leaves a large global footprint. It is marked by a vast number of mircroexpulsions of small farmers and villages, and by rising levels of toxicity in the land and water surrounding the plantations constructed on acquired land. There are growing numbers of displaced people, rural migrants moving to slums in the cities, destroyed villages and smallholder economies, and, in the long run, much dead land. What actually happens when a new owner/leaser, whether national or foreign, has acquired 2.8 million hectares of land to grow palm for biofuels? Mostly, dozens of villages . . . are expelled from the land. Some may receive compensation and some may be resettled in equivalent terrain. But generally speaking, the losses are far larger than the compensations. Finally, flora and fauna are expelled to make room for monocultures. All this brings degradation of the land and the earth itself, through loss of diversity of nutrients and insect life. After a few decades the land will be exhausted, clinically dead, as we have seen in the older plantation zones in Central America, the Caribbean, and parts of Africa.[14]

This is a clear example of the urban pathologies which were first identified during the rise of the industrial cities in Europe during the nineteenth century now reappearing, this time on a global scale in the age of the endless city. The situation we have described here underlines the fact that there are multiple factors which contribute toward the creation of the divided city. Not only are millions of people expelled from their traditional lands and forced to move into the cities, resulting in its uncontrolled expansion and ever-deepening economic and social divisions, but other millions, including nomadic peoples whose way of life reaches back even further into human history, discover that their ancient freedom to roam is increasingly curtailed as the changes resulting from the impact of urban culture limit their access to land and consequently bring their very identity and ancient way of life under growing threat.

Before we leave the issue of the ownership and use of land we should notice a further development which tends toward the deepening of the divide between rich and poor. Geologists and geographers point out that huge amounts of material resulting from processes such as mining, construction, or the waste produced by demolition and urban regeneration, are reshaping the surface of the earth and creating new forms of geology beneath our feet. So massive is this trend that our era is being identified geologically as the Age of the Anthropocene, the age in which human agency shapes land, soil and the very geology of the earth – as well as air, atmosphere, biosphere and ocean – more powerfully than any other ‘natural’ force.[15] In coastal cities in far-flung locations such as Karachi in Pakistan, Sochi on the Black Sea, Qatar in the Middle East, and Lagos on Nigeria’s Atlantic coast, new land is being created in the shape of artificial islands on which luxury housing and high-end tourist facilities can be built.

We have mentioned the problems of Lagos, an African megacity which has continued to expand despite the building of the new capital of Abuja, intended to relieve pressure on this coastal, postcolonial metropolis. In fact, the population of this city has continued to increase, growing from an estimated five million people in 1980 to around twenty million today, with no sign of this trend slowing down. It is reported that almost ten-thousand millionaires live in Lagos, while two-thirds of the population are slum dwellers, making it an archetypical divided city.[16] Having witnessed the apparent success of Dubai and other postmodern urban projects built on reclaimed or manufactured land, work is now well advanced on a new island-city named Eko-Atlantic, using material dredged up from the ocean floor. Ten million square metres of land has been reclaimed from the ocean, and the new skyscrapers now rising on site will be protected from rising sea levels by an 8.5 kilometre wall surrounding the entire area. According to the developers, this is an investment opportunity on an unprecedented scale and a gateway to emerging markets on the continent.[17]

Nothing is said about the impact of this dream city on the millions of Lagosians who will remain in the slums, an oversight all the more shocking since some experts have warned that the wall protecting the wealthy occupants of Eko-Atlantic from the possible rise in sea levels may divert tidal flows into the low-lying city itself, causing flooding on a catastrophic scale. Stephen Graham comments that the corporately built island promises to insulate Nigeria’s wealthy elites from the miseries that Lagos’s urban poor are experiencing in the face of global sea-level rises, and he quotes a journalist who describes the project as an architectural insult to the daily circumstances of ordinary Nigerians.[18]

If then we witness both the reappearance of the urban pathologies which accompanied the rise of the industrial city in the nineteenth century, together with the emergence of entirely new challenges as urban history moves into a period marked by what has been described as postmodern hyperspace, are there any positive lessons to be learned from that earlier phase of urban history which might offer us some guidance and encouragement at the present time?[19]

Lessons from the Age of the Industrial City

In 1845 Friedrich Engels published his ground-breaking study of conditions in the slums of the industrial city of Manchester. In language which might sound remarkably relevant in the informal settlements that have sprung up throughout the endless city today, he described districts in which there were heaps of debris, refuse and offal; standing pools for gutters, and a stench which would make it impossible for a human being in any degree civilized to live in such a district.[20] However, by the end of the nineteenth century, while significant problems remained, an increasing sense of shame concerning the squalor in which so many people lived, together with a deepening awareness of the connections between the health and well-being of the poorest citizens and the flourishing of the entire community, resulted in concrete and visible changes. Asa Briggs writes of the growth of municipal pride in the industrial cities of Victorian Britain and new and bold courses of action which led to the tackling of some of the most serious problems of public health, brought a growing recognition of the urgency of reconnection with the natural world, and created a legacy of cityscapes which, where they survive, still attract admiration today. Briggs describes the vast accumulation of social capital which the Victorians raised resulting in a huge development of public offices, hospitals, schools, sewage farms and water works.[21]

A significant factor in this urban transformation was what came to be called the Nonconformist Conscience which was related to the preaching of a Civic Gospel in cities such as Birmingham and Glasgow. Christian preachers urged their congregations to work on the committees of hospitals, to become aldermen and councillors, to give time and money to whatever improvements are intended to develop the intelligence of the community. Crowded congregations were urged to be active in the cause of urban reform, to act as salt and light by ensuring their districts were well drained, well lighted, and well paved; that there are good schools for every class of the population: that there are harmless public amusements; that all parochial and municipal affairs are conducted honourably and equitably.[22]

The influence of evangelical Christianity during this period can be seen in the example of the Scottish preacher Thomas Guthrie, whose statue still stands on Princes Street in Edinburgh, identifying him as The friend of the poor and oppressed. Guthrie undertook serious research into the urban pathologies of the city and used his pulpit to enlighten – and shock – his middle-class hearers. In powerful sermons which drew large crowds of listeners, he demanded that Christians recognize the reality of the evils of the divided city and work to bring about justice and equality. He denounced the ignorance with which the middle classes discussed the problem of poverty and rejected the view that evangelism alone might be the solution to all social ills. Political action would be essential to challenge and transform a system of trade which offers up our children to the Moloch of money, and builds fortunes in many instances on the ruins of public morality and domestic happiness.[23]

Preaching of this kind could be heard